The US is moving to reclaim the Bagram airbase from the Taliban after losing it during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Donald Trump announced.
“We’re trying to get it back, by the way,” Mr Trump told reporters during a joint press conference with Sir Keir Starmer in Aylesbury on Thursday.
The Bagram base was the largest operated by the US in Afghanistan and is strategically important in countering China’s growing influence in the region.
Mr Trump suggested that he was negotiating with the Taliban to retake ownership, adding: “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back.”
They’re going to pay the taliban aren’t they.
In arms and technology
Schoolfriend of mine was captured, tortured and killed by the Taliban. I still remember crying over a song we sung.
We don’t just have Farage wanting to pay them to take back people the Taliban wanna kill, but we have this baby fucker wanna give them money for their airbase.
The fash want to give these fuckers money, perhaps because on some level, they admire them. The Taliban use the same excuse for their fucked up policies as the fash do (“we’re preserving our culture”).
I mean the Taliban literally are born out of the US funding of mujahedeen Extremists. Afghanistan while clan based had a solid leader in the 70s
The Taliban were an indigenous rabble of fanatical seminary students. The Pakistani military dictator Zia and the Pakistani intelligence agency (the ISI) started throwing money (some CIA-derived, much more from the Saudis and Gulfies) at the Taliban, setting up training camps for them in Pakistan, enabling them to grow as a militia and a political force. Most of this growth was in the late phases of the expulsion of the Russians and their puppet government, and more so during the social upheavals that followed.
Al-Qaida had a more direct muj lineage. Binladen got his start as a bagman delivering Saudi money to the mujahideen. But Al-Qaida was a multinational organizaion, not rooted in Afghan society. The Taliban shared Sunni fundamentalist fanaticism with AQ, but in a Pushtu cultural context. For example, they turned a blind eye to such traditional Pushtu practices as buggering pubescent boys. The Taliban have also gone to great lengths to brutally oppress and sometimes murder people from other ethnic and religious groups within Afghanistan.
After the end of the Russian occupation, the main successor groups to the mujahideen were the various warlord-led militias that later formed the Northern Alliance. The Taliban fought against them.
So, while the CIA blowback narrative is partially true, the Pakistani meddling explanation is closer to the truth.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that.